Collaborative/Cooperative

Cooperative Collection DevelopmentInterface: Volume 26 Number 3, Fall, 2004. Interface is the newsletter published by the ASCLA division of the ALA. This page lists all the articles that deal with the topic of cooperative collection development.

Books Per Student

There are no longer ALA standards in this area; rather, benchmark your collection against current national school library surveys, such as:

Annual (previously biennial) survey which appears in the magazine, School Library Journal; the last installment of the survey with a number of books per student is in the April 2009 issue, titled "School Library Journal's Spending Survey," by Lesley Farmer and Marilyn Shontz. For books per student, view Table 4. The survey indicates an average 27 books per pupil for elementary schools, 19 books per pupil for middle/junior high schools, and 16 books per pupil for (senior) high schools.

The 2012 edition of the survey in the March 2012 issue, titled, Brace Yourself: SLJ's school library spending survey shows the hard times aren't over, and better advocacy is needed, by Lesley Farmer, indicates not a median but a net number of books added to collections, in the chart The State of Book Collections, and stated: "Historically, the size of a school library’s book collection has correlated positively with grade level and student enrollment. Elementary school LMCs have roughly 12,000 books on their shelves, middle schools offer around 13,000 titles, and high schools weigh in with 13,636 titles. Public school libraries edged out private, with an average of 12,500 volumes to 11,000, respectively. On the whole, book collections grew slightly, with a net increase of 200 titles each."